Conservation Science for a Healthy Planet

As climate is warming up, timing of nesting & harvesting changing, more bird nests are destroyed in Finnish farmland

….Finnish farmers are adapting to the warming climate by anticipating the time when they sow their fields in the spring. At the same time, birds have also advanced the time of breeding as the spring temperatures are becoming milder in response to climate change.

A new study shows that birds have shifted the time of their breeding much faster than the farmers are anticipating their sowing times in Finnish farmland. This means that more birds are nowadays laying their eggs on fields that are still to be sown, a mismatch in timing that is most likely fatal for the bird nests…….Mechanical sowing of large arable areas in spring causes the destruction of many lapwing and curlew nests and traditionally, the majority of the birds started breeding later and thus avoided nest destruction. The new study found that this issue has grown much bigger under climate change. The long-term ringing data of breeding curlew and lapwings since 1970s suggest that as a result of shifts in timing of breeding, the incoming mechanical sowing destroys most of the nests that are laid on arable land….Andrea Santangeli, Aleksi Lehikoinen, Anna Bock, Pirjo Peltonen-Sainio, Lauri Jauhiainen, Marco Girardello, Jari Valkama. Stronger response of farmland birds than farmers to climate change leads to the emergence of an ecological trap. Biological Conservation, 2018; 217: 166 DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2017.11.002

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The information in this blog is compiled by Point Blue President & CEO, Ellie Cohen, from science news outlets from around the world. It does not necessarily reflect the views of Point Blue or our staff.